Steel is the ultimate circular material. We can both reuse and recycle it infinitely. From discarded fridges to electric cars and bridges.
The making of high-quality steel requires many raw materials, such as coal, sinter and pellets. The more steel we recycle, the more sustainable our production process becomes. Resulting in emitting as few emissions as possible. That is our ambition.
By recycling more, we don’t need to make as much steel and therefore we need less coal and ores. This way, our steel is not only circular but cleaner as well.
For every tonne of scrap we convert into new steel, we reduce our CO2 emissions by 1.6 tonnes. And in the near future, we will recycle even more scrap. We will increase the usage of scrap from 17% now to 30% from 2030 onwards.
That way, we will recycle enough steel to make, say, 65 billion cans!
So, our steel is partly made from scrap metal - a whole lot of scrap. More than a million tonnes a year. That equals the weight of 137 Eiffel Towers!
Some of the scrap we reuse comes from our own production process, but we have buy much as well.
We use most of the scrap at the Steel Plant. Here, we mix it with liquid hot metal from the blast furnaces. The scrap cools down the hot metal, after which we can cast it into steel slabs and subsequently process it into steel coils.
We are constantly looking for new ways to use more scrap. At Blast Furnace 7, for instance, we are investigating whether scrap can partly replace raw materials such as sinter and pellets. In the future, this will allow us to recycle 300,000 tonnes of scrap annually.
From 2030 onwards, we will produce green steel. We will do this with new plants, a different production process and more sustainable energy sources.
Using more scrap is part of that plan as well. The new plants can process much more scrap, for instance, which will benefit our circularity.
From 2030 onwards, we wish to increase our usage of scrap to 30%.
Scrap metal (or simply scrap) is discarded or unusable metal, from, for example, household appliances, bicycles and car parts.
We source our scrap metal from two different sources. One part comes from our own production, such as the excess steel we have to cut away when finishing steel coils. The second part is scrap we buy from other firms, such as scrapyards and waste processors.
We mainly recycle steel from ships, buildings, windmills and train rails, but we also use cans and scrap from household waste.
EN -Green steel and sustainability - L2 Co2-neutral steel
We are going for green, clean and circular steel. Steel that is made to shape the future. Steel that is used, among other things, for solar farms, wind turbines, and batteries for electric cars.
